After all the pre-season talk of being potential dark-horses this year, Everton began the new Premier League season with a disappointing defeat against Blackburn Rovers.
Ewood Park has become a difficult place to pick up points since ‘Big’ (which is just a nice way of saying fat) Sam Allardyce rolled into town with his barbaric brand of percentage football. Blackburn only lost something like three home games last season, but Everton were so poor that it makes it difficult to simply put this one down to a one-off stumble in the face of difficult opposition.
Much of the praise that is heaped on David Moyes and his players is well-deserved. We have a good team who work hard for each other and, more often than not, play with some style. However, such are the gaping holes in certain areas of the pitch that I can’t help but feel as though a lot of Evertonians think we’re a lot better than we actually are.
Many blues have been boldly predicting Champions League qualification, pointing to the superb run Everton went on during the second-half of last season as evidence that Moyes finally has a squad good enough to compete at the top-end of the table. Factor in the manager finally having the majority of his players available to him after various long-term injuries, as well as there being no added Europa League fixtures to deal with, and it’s easy to see why people are feeling so optimistic.
Unfortunately though, things are rarely as easy as they first appear in football. Going on a great run of form when your season is effectively dead and buried anyway and there’s no real pressure or expectation from the fans or media is all well and good, but it means very little if you can’t repeat the feat when there are prizes to be won. Losing away from home on the opening day of the season is hardly an indication that a team is doomed to fail, but there were a number of issues evident on Saturday that need to be addressed.
Everton’s biggest problem lies in the final third, where a total lack of movement from the forwards prevents space being opened up for the midfield to attack. Louis Saha and Tim Cahill are useful players in their own ways, but as a pair they seem more interested in contesting individual battles with centre-halves than linking with the midfield or running the channels to drag defenders out of position.
It remains to be seen whether or not Jermaine Beckford is going to cut it in the Premier League or if Yakubu even has a future at Everton, but at this point it looks as though Moyes is going to have to find someone better to lead the line. Money is clearly in short supply so the only option is to move on the likes of Yakubu and Joseph Yobo - two big earners who really shouldn’t be at the club if the manager doesn’t rate them as good enough for the bench.
Speaking of the bench, where was Seamus Coleman? The lad has excelled whenever given a chance in the first team and featured in every pre-season fixture. Considering Everton’s total lack of attacking pace, and the fact Johnny Heitinga was on the bench, it seems bizarre that Moyes felt the need to include Tony Hibbert among his substitutes at Coleman’s expense.
It’s fairly obvious that Everton can’t afford to buy Landon Donovan or any other winger of note to play on the right of midfield, which makes having Coleman over-lapping one of our many centre midfielders that get stuck out wide seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately Moyes appears to value shoe-horning class prefect Phil Neville into the side above all else.
The goal itself was a freak. As much as I don’t rate Tim ‘lead boots’ Howard it would be stupid to call his comical dropping of a standard catch anything other than a one-off that could have happened to anyone. The American doesn’t seem to let errors damage his confidence so hopefully this won’t lead to a run of poor form.
It’s difficult to say how big an impact Howard’s calamity goalkeeping had on the match. Kalinic’s goal certainly gave Allardyce the invitation he craves to have his team sit back and smash the ball as hard and far as possible, but given how much Everton dominated possession there’s little excuse for not being able to carve out a couple of chances against limited opposition.
Moyes made the changes you’d expect when chasing a game: Beckford came on for the obligatory ten minutes of 4-4-2, Cahill moved to the right of midfield because taking him off is apparently incomprehensible, and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov was given fifteen minutes to try and score a screamer. Jack Rodwell also got on the pitch but didn’t have much time to make an impact.
Everton’s only real effort on goal came from a Phil Jagielka piledriver in the dying minutes, although Beckford did manage to drag a shot about twenty yards wide on the turn. Blackburn didn’t do much themselves but still looked the more likely to add to the scoring with on-loan forward Mame Biram Diouf looking particularly dangerous after replacing Kalinic.
A convincing performance is a must in Everton’s next game at home to Wolves on Saturday. Saha deserves to be dropped and Leon Osman has no business playing wide-right. It’ll be interesting to see whether Rodwell comes into the side at the expense of the blatantly unfit Marouane Fellaini (who was all over the place at times on Saturday), though it seems more likely that the only change will be Bilyaletdinov coming in for Osman.
In other news, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has pulled out of his UFC 119 main-event rematch with Frank Mir, citing long-standing hip and knee injuries which require surgery. Former Pride GP winner Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic has agreed to step in and face Mir in the card’s headline bout.
As a big Cro Cop fan who can’t stand Frank Mir I’m really hoping to see a vintage Filipovic performance, but even in his recent win over Pat Barry the Croatian Jack Bauer looked a shadow of the man who terrorised heavyweights in Japan. It’d be sweet to see Mir be the first to suffer a classic Cro Cop left high-kick knockout in a UFC ring though, even if it is pretty unlikely.
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